5 Ways to Boost Your Energy, Boost Your Joy, Lose Weight AND Much More!

 One of my constant refrains in my group coaching as well as individual programs is that joy comes from learning new things. If you haven't done any significant non-career learning in a while, this probably sounds .

So here's my suggestion: trust me enough to try it. Options are endless. There are practical classes (what to do when the next disaster strikes; how to fly-fish, etc), and there are fascinating, intellectually-stimulating classes (how did the early Christians evolve their idea that Jesus was god; how did dinosaurs evolve into birds; how to write engaging travel stories for your family to enjoy).

What they all have in common is that they are engaging (you are thinking about them, not politics, the bills, your teenagers, your boss or the job market), and they are FUN.  When you spend time having fun and learning, as opposed to fun that you’ve done many times before (watch football on TV), you make more areas in your brain work.  You particularly make your hippocampus, where memory is stored, work hard.  The harder it works, the larger it gets.  New neurons emerge from neuronal stem cells if you work your hippocampus enough.  [Stress kills neurons and shrinks your hippocampus.] 

As you move through life, you tend to get into habits and routines, so your brain starts to “coast.”  When you are not learning new things, you invite cognitive decline to make a home, a process that doesn’t wait until you are in your 60s, please note!  I totally get why most of us don’t want to go into Learner Mode.  A Learner, by definition, hasn’t got a clue what’s going on. Do you enjoy that lost and clueless feeling?  No, course, not.  THAT, dear friends, more than the “I don’t have time to have fun” is the real reason why Learning isn’t compelling.  If we’re honest, those of us who “don’t have time” do make time for sitcoms and sports.   

Do you have any idea how many dinosaur species you get to learn about and try to remember in the Paleontology: How Therapod Dinosaurs Became Birds class from U of Alberta on Coursera?  A lot. I wasn’t taking it for a grade, so who cares how many times I take the tests before I get it?  Just trying to remember as much as possible was enough of a workout to kick my hippocampus’ butt.  Man, was that fascinating!  Hubby and I couldn’t tear ourselves away, every evening for a week.  And it was FREE. 

You want your hippocampus as robust as possible if you are going to avoid Alzheimer’s, and besides, learning is FUN. 

So here’s my challenge to you all:  One night this week, turn the TV off, get the kids to do their chores, and sit down at your Internet and research:

·        **  Coursera – where I do my dinosaur study, and many others learn history, language, writing, and on and on.  Most classes are FREE.  I've learned from Laura.com, but that's mostly work-related, not fun.  I have heard good things about Udemy, but haven't taken anything there.

·        ** The Great Courses – which aren’t free, but are regularly discounted, and many libraries carry some of them.  I bought How Jesus Became God and was amazingly enlightened at hundreds of years of conceptual evolution on just exactly who Jesus was, and if he was god, when he became god.  Whatever your actual beliefs, the history is can’t-stop-listening engrossing.

·       ** Local community centers  – where you can try something entirely different to give your hippocampus a real workout.  How about art?  [Can’t do it?  Great.  Skilled is what you are when you FINISH, not before you start!]  You can sign up for exercise classes while you’re at it.  My community center has a water slide that is open on Saturday mornings.  Just try to convince me that’s not fun.  You can’t.  Your head is shaking but your lips are curving up in an unconscious smile.  You know how much fun it is. 

·       **  Local community colleges will let you attend some classes without a grade.  If you want to attend Over 55/Senior college, you can, even if you’re not quite that experienced with life.  You don’t have to dye your hair grey and the yearly fee is only $125 in my town.

The key is to set aside your performance anxiety and your reluctance to be clumsy and dopey (as one of my clients put it).  Not knowing what you’re doing is the fog that clears as you work at it.  Working your brain and having fun doing it is the greatest rejuvenator of tired minds, hearts and souls, second only to physical exercise.  I combine the two by looking through crochet-pattern and art-instruction books while I fast-walk on a treadmill, 4 days a week.  [The other three I splash and laugh in water aerobics classes.  Not too much learning, but lots of movement; laughter reduces my cortisol load as well.]  When I emerge from my dinosaurs, or my crochet-treadmill, or my splashing, I have such a surge of energy, the “lost time” is more than made up in increased cleverness in solving problems and getting tasks done, and the enthusiasm to embrace all the boring and/or scary parts.  It’s easy to plunge in and just git ‘er done, when you have so much fun to get back to!

Next week: pick something to learn.

Week after: start it.  Get through the initial discomfort to break through to the “wow, that’s cool.”   The discomfort that has been scaring you for years might only last a minute!

Want to discover more ways to have fun with the same 24 hours you have now?  Call for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  www.soaringdragon.biz

Stress and the Joys of Dessert - and Pasta

Stress releases what we popularly refer to as adrenalin, and cortisol.  Wonder why you can't lose weight?  Too little sleep and too much cortisol.  That is why a primary component of my Weight Loss packages (www.soaringdragon.biz) is attention to methods of FAST, EFFECTIVE providing comfort and relief from whatever is driving that flood of cortisol.  As the Dalai Lama and others point out, when you are calmer you can determine if it is something you can do something about - and most of the time you can do SOMEthing.  So go do it.  Or it's something beyond your powers.  Then really, truly let go of being upset about it.  Move on.  Focus on what you can gain in the future, not what you lost in the past.

And sometimes it just means that you have to hang on, and try again, in a different way.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, a hero is no braver than an ordinary person, they are just braver for 5 minutes longer.  Amen.

So when you tell me that you are "too busy" for an inexpensive Reiki class, or tapping training, that you can't take time to exercise or learn breathing exercises, and I know that you are choosing instead to give yourself comfort in the way you always have - with food - think about this:  You can learn nearly all of the above in an 8 hour day with me.  And the only effect will be longer life, stronger body, heart and soul - and effortless relief from the effects of stress for the rest of your life.  What POWER in your hands.  Continuing to medicate your feelings with sugar, dessert and pasta shortens your life, weakens your heart and soul, and comforts you for at most an hour.  

You deserve more than that!  

Don't you?  When getting real power is so easy?  

Call or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch) and see what power you can put into YOUR hands!

Thinking I Understand You.....

Thinking I understand you .... and I really, truly don't.

This quote is so important to keep in mind.

When I am most inclined to shoot off my mouth, full of certainty that I know what The Truth is - especially if I think I know the answer AND it's really quite simple, if you only...... - this quote flashes into my mind and I shut my mouth.  

How hard it is for this language-loving species of ours to get through to ourselves that sometimes the finest wordsmith on earth really, truly cannot convey an experience. You'll never know what war is like from watching movies, reading books or even listening to people.  You'll never know what a violent physical assault, especially a sexual assault, does to the depths of a soul from listening, reading or watching movies. [And watching movies can cause PTSD in empathetic people, so please don't.]  You'll also never know about parenting from having your nieces for a weekend or from reading, listening or watching.

You'll never know about the awe, the soul-shattering, body-shaking or very quiet transcendence that comes at the top of tall mountains that you climbed yourself.  You can't visit a forest or a waterfall in a video.  You can't imagine the near-extinction event our ancestors survived 60,000 years ago.

We call it humility.  Just an acknowledgement of the shouldn't-be-so-profound truth that we don't know everything, and we usually don't know better than the people who have had the experience.  It's just the human experience.  Until we actually have a Vulcan mind-meld, our experience-sharing ability will always be limited to what language can convey and some of the most important experiences are impossible to completely encapsulate in words.  



I work with entrepreneurs who want to blast through the internal barriers to success, stemming from events of their earlier life.  I also work with other serious professionals and people who aspire to being serious professionals, who are held back by traumas from childhood, previous spouse, military experience, traffic accidents, violence.  It may be formally-diagnosed PTSD or just "barriers" that need blasting away.  I don't pretend to be all-knowing.  I just have some very powerful tools for making the problem go away - permanently.  

You don't have to put up with less enjoyment than you could be having from life.  Contact me for a FREE Getting Unstuck session today.  A real session, not a sales pitch. Be impressed by all my academic degrees, specialty certifications, testimonials and special programs at www.soaringdragon.biz  Then contact me at  victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com.

The Joys of Right Now, Right Here

Nelson Mandela, Racism, Rage, Brexit, Donald Trump & Having Genuine Goodness WIN

Today is International Mandela Day.  Hold that thought for a bit.

This week we discover that 65% of people who voted for Britain to leave the European Union either didn’t realize the vote was “serious” or, having come down from their emotional state, want a second vote so they can say Stay.  What’s with all the rage?   I call it being Drunk on Dudgeon.  Just like drunk on alcohol variety, if you are drunk on dudgeon, you are not capable of making decisions in YOUR long-term, real best interest.  You are so overwrought (drunk) on how badly you’ve been treated by [someone, some group of people, some organization or just The World in general], that you are supremely easy to manipulate in ways that shoot you in the head [really harm YOU in a serious way] and give someone else power.  Or that give you a short-term feeling of power at the expense of actually having power.  That last is really important: feeling something isn’t the same as having that something be actual reality.

In the British case, a wide swath of English working-class folks, especially “white” English, believed the nonsense of Boris Johnson and others who just flat out lied with the intention of making a bid for Prime Minister/power themselves [the manipulation] because they were angry about their declining economic prospects and subsequent economic safety and power.  And those dingbats in Brussels were acting imperious and not compromising or respectful.  All the details are irrelevant.  People felt a loss of power and turned to the short-term pumping up that rage gives you in place of cold, strategic, implacable planning.  I know that when you “feel” powerless [it’s in quotes for a reason; voting strategically gives you real power], rage is the easiest neural pathway to take.  I know.  But it is also exactly – exactly – equivalent to destroying your goals and dreams.  Why wait for your Nemesis to do it?  Do it to yourself. 

Aristotle said that you can be angry – but make sure that you are angry at the right time, in the right way, with the right person.  The Brexit voters who were manipulated by (really, really easily-checked) lies were not Done To By The Man.  They did it to themselves, by letting themselves get Drunk on Dudgeon.

In the Star Trek universe, a wonderful quote by an actual human whose name I’ve forgotten has been mis-attributed to the Klingons.  Revenge is a dish best served cold.  That means: don’t get Drunk on Dudgeon!  Think, cold and calm and analytical.  Do ONLY what actually advances your long-term agenda, not your short-term emotions. 

This is a universal human problem.  Every culture on every continent, of every skin color and sex has this same problem because it happens in the human brain.

In the USA right now,  groups of people are squaring off with each other, all Drunk on Dudgeon.  Socially conservative white working class Americans, along with quite a few black working class folks, have settled on racist demagogue Donald Trump as the “alcohol” to get drunk on.  Some Black Lives Matter activists have responded to a string on highly-publicized police killings of black men and women to use hateful rhetoric against all police officers, demonizing all white cops as killer racists.  It is completely predictable that demonizing rhetoric will resonate in a mentally-unhinged black military veteran (or two) who will get Drunk on Dudgeon in their turn and become mass killers of well-intentioned, innocent police officers.  There are legitimate grievances all around, as President Obama has so eloquently reminded us.

He also reminds us, so beautifully, and without using my exact verbiage, that becoming Drunk on Dudgeon instead of being strategic does not serve the long-term best interests of any genuinely harmed parties.  Unstrategic hate and rage only burns the world down.  It has never, in all ten thousand years of human civilization, led to justice.     

In my book, Take Back Your Lost Heart, I analyzed why the Montgomery Bus Boycott was so successful.  Remember: successful.  The keys were going after the strategic issue and targeting the bus company’s revenues; being strategic and keeping tempers cold [remember the Klingons] so that the boycott had a lot of allies among business owners, among progressive and humanistic white civilians and even among some police.  Polarizing the city exclusively along color lines didn’t happen.  A significant percentage of the cars picking up non-bus-riding black folks needing to get to work were white-driven.  Good was battling Evil all right, but the organizers were not stupid enough to make every white person in town their enemy by labeling them as such.  THAT, my friends, is why they won. 

Contrast that with screaming and taking over the podium so that the thousands of people of all colors who came to hear a candidate talk can’t do so…. A super-leftist candidate at that.  Sound strategic to you?

Giving up Drunk on Dudgeon and getting very, very cool always wins.  Always.  Nelson Mandela, whose birthday we celebrate today, had a cold and analytical soul.  He could take his righteous rage and stop it dead, then channel it into cold, analytical thinking.  When things were at their worst, there was little he could do but endure. His last 12 years in prison, though, he played the white power structure like a Stradivarius violin.  He never lumped his jailers (mostly working-class, politically-powerless guys) in the same bag as the rich pukes who ran the country. His narrow-thinking, Drunk on Dudgeon fellow prisoners were appalled, and criticized him as a “collaborator” but he was right and they were stupid.  The jailers (cops), as bad as some of them were, were just products of the same crazy system as the thousands of black men and women killed by the security services or local cops.  And some of them were decent guys stuck in a bad situation.  

So, this Mandela Day, let’s ALL start thinking like Madiba.  Strategic.  Cool.  Calculating.  And when someone of any color, of any sex, on any issue tries to play us like a Strad, manipulating our emotions, let’s stop, take a deep breath and think about the bigger picture, the long-term real goals and really, clearly think it all through, as both President Obama and Mr. Nelson Mandela remind us to.  If Madiba could take down apartheid with cool, analytical, strategic thinking, why on earth are we using stupid confrontational tactics (on all sides) and expecting to win? 

Giving up Drunk on Dudgeon is hard.  It’s hard to give up the easy path.  But we’re not in this to go down the stupid, easy path.  We can represent the finest behavior humanity is capable of – and the smartest.  Like the end of apartheid, like the bus boycott, we good people of this country and this world will win, but only if we are cool, analytical, strategic.  The best way to honor Nelson Mandela today, and every day, is to emulate his smarts, his courage and his violin-playing.  He won.  When the urge to spew self-righteous anger and hate starts getting too much to hold back, remember – HE WON.

We will, too.  I have faith.  

What is the #1 "Pain Point" people come to me to relieve? Go ahead and give it your best guess....

 What is the #1 quest people come to me for?  It’s not fame and entrepreneurial fortune, although many of them do, and I can definitely show people how to get more fortune.  It’s not a better career, although ditto.  It’s not freedom from physical pain and significant health problems, although many of them do.

Nope, the absolute #1 quest is – clarity.  If there were a tagline for this age it might very well be “I’m so confused and I don’t know what to do.”  What they mean is that what they really WANT is buried so deep under layers of “This knowledge is too scary – don’t, whatever I say, let me know this truth” that they couldn’t excavate it with a power-shovel.

Truth is so scary for so many of us because if we knew what we really needed and what we really wanted for ourselves we would have to initiate really, really scary conversations with people about the amount of relative power we have in our lives.  We might need to have conversations that threaten our financial survival or our definition of ourselves. 

When someone comes to me seeking clarity, it is nearly always true that clarity is being deliberately obscured as a self-protection mechanism by the person’s deep unconscious.

I particularly admire the clients who, when they start to realize what clarity would really mean, take a deep breath, strap on their Courage backpack, take their Courage vitamins, and plunge into the depths.  When that happens, the most glorious transformations become possible.  Sometimes, the reality isn’t as scary as the nightmares dreamed up by their (frequently mistreated or emotionally abandoned) child-selves.  Sometimes the reality is about right.  Sometimes the reality is much, much worse.

What is always true is that the courage to dive deep and face truth with deep breathing and slow steps and as many emotions as come up is a rare and glorious commodity.

The people who walk that path to their own and genuine truth, whether they are looking for clarity, more entrepreneurial success, a better career, better health or better something else, are my personal heroes.

God bless you all, every one!  You are the brave souls who bring light to human life.  Bless you all, every one.  

Get a FREE Getting Unstuck session!  Not a sales pitch, a real session.  Contact me at www.soaringdragon.biz or call 253-203-6676

Seek Happiness, yes! Insist on character and integrity in yourself, yes! They go together, yes, yes!!

 Character, integrity and self-control: Starting to look kind of attractive, actually

Do more of what makes you happy.  It’s so easy for this to become a joke, an invitation to self-indulgence and hedonistic indifference.  I was struck this week at how American culture has shifted from character values that I grew up with.  A woman that I gifted with a $100 piece of exercise equipment complained to the Facebook group admin because the equipment didn’t fit under her bed.  Oh, waaah.  [I mistook the vendor and posted it wrong, then corrected it.  Hint: the originally-described equipment wouldn’t have fit under her bed, either.  And since when am I or anyone else responsible for something fitting under your bed?  Bring it back or otherwise deal with it.]  

How I was raised: if someone gives you something as a gift, the ONLY acceptable response is “Thank you.”  Then shut up, completely, permanently and forever.  Even if it’s the wrong size, the color is horrible and it doesn’t fit under your bed.  You don’t pretend to be grateful to the gifter’s face and then spew complaints to an authority-figure third party or the rest of the family or Facebook Friend cohort behind your gifter’s back. 

People used to think less of you for that kind of weasely behavior.  No more.  And maybe that’s a mistake.  Maybe we want to take our culture back in the direction of character.  Maybe we want to embrace actions of integrity – like talking TO people, not ABOUT people.  Maybe we want to deal with it a bit more and whine a lot less.

I know that after the Great Recession, in which I and millions of other Americans lost our shirts, with a weak, contingent-labor-loving employment paradigm, and about 1% of the previous level of economic and emotional safety, a lot of us are very, very frightened, to our cores.  Frightened of outcomes that would be unthinkable in any other advanced First World country, like living on the street.  And when people are scared, and know that they have no power to get back at their oppressors, they look for the nearest easy, weak target for their rage.  They find that easy, weak target in people less able than themselves – people who are financially struggling even more (and can’t fight back effectively), who are disabled, who are a minority color or religion or culture.  Or even just the nice people like me who are kind, generous and not as sly and political as they are.

What if we all just collectively cut it out?

Do more POSITIVE THINGS that make you happy.  Color with your kids, then put them to bed early and relax with a book for an hour.  Make nice with your neighbors who like you kids and will supervise their homework while you go to the gym, listen to Taylor Swift and improve your health.   Find the “free museum” day and take yourself off for a date with joy.  As the frustrations of the day build up, stop, take five deep, slow breaths and visualize tropical paradises or some of your life’s happy memories.  You have them, you know you do! 

Do this enough times and you won’t come home ready to spew lies and vitriol on your fellow-travelers through the travails of life.

Do more of what makes you genuinely happy.  Kicking the dog – or your fellow struggling humanity – will never do it.  My mother taught me to have courage and be kind a half-century before Disney turned it into a cliché.  Do more of that – and you will be happy.  

Having trouble being happy?  Call for a FREE Getting Unstuck session!  No sales pitch, a free roadmap to how to make life less fraught and more fun.  You deserve to be happy....

Call 253-203-6676 or email victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com.   www.soaringdragon.biz

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